Knit Two

by Kate Jacobs

  “You want to marry my mother but not leave her anything if you die?” Nathan was incredulous. “What sort of man are you?”

  “The smart kind,” said Marty calmly. “I know what’s what in this world.”

  Nathan sat there, silently leafing through the prenuptial document.

  “You’re not even leaving her your share of the new apartment you bought?”

  “Hell, no,” said Marty. “I bought that place lock, stock, and barrel. Though, if you’ll see the fine print, it says she has the right to live there until she dies. I’m not heartless. She just doesn’t get to own.”

  “My mother bought and paid for your new digs, Popper,” spat out Nathan. “I don’t care how much fucking pastrami you sell in this dive, it would never be enough to buy that pad the two of you are living in.”

  “Like I said, my portfolio is more than sandwiches,” said Marty. “And you damn well better believe I bought that apartment for your mother and myself. And if you don’t believe me, well, I guess I don’t care.”

  “You’re a liar,” said Nathan. What sort of man was this joker? He’d been right to be wary.

  “You’re a spoiled little boy masquerading as a middle-aged man.”

  “My mother is a wonderful person,” said Nathan. “And I can’t stand to see her manipulated by you. How dare you ask her to sign a prenup.”

  Marty appraised Nathan. He didn’t hate the guy. In fact, he understood him. How difficult it must be when your mother suddenly announces she has a boyfriend after years of seeming to settle into widowhood. For Nathan, his parents were probably still a couple in his mind, and seeing Anita with someone else must be irksome.

  “Okay,” said Marty “You’re right. No prenups. But we’re still getting married, Nathan, and your presence is expected at the wedding.”

  Nathan didn’t say anything, though his red face betrayed his anger. Without a word, he quietly walked out of the deli and onto the street.

  Marty picked up the envelope and looked at the legally binding agreement he’d paid his attorneys to create. It was real enough, all right, not that he’d ever had any intention of presenting it to Anita. And her name was on the deed to their high-rise apartment, without question, and he’d happily bought the place and all the overpriced furniture she picked out to go into it. They didn’t have issues with money. They were blessed with the good fortune to have more than enough of it individually, and the good sense to not let it come between them. They’d sorted out their affairs ages ago. Smiling to himself, Marty tore the prenup in half and opened up his Daily News to the sports section.

  A breeze would have been nice, just to cool him down. But, like everything in his life these days, he got the opposite of what he wanted: a hot, muggy June in New York City, the sidewalk burning in the sun. Dammit! Marty had set him up. He was a conniving bastard, that man: he’d anticipated what Nathan wanted to discuss and then come out swinging. For God’s sake, no one needed a document to protect them from Anita.

  He’d been had. What he intended was a serious, man-to-man discussion, to try to suss out what Marty was all about. Nathan had fully planned to demand a prenuptial agreement, certainly, and wait to see how Marty would react: it would have been a perfect test.

  If he hadn’t lost his temper, they might have been able to talk calmly. But that’s all he’d been doing lately. Getting angry. Feeling trapped. Suffocating on good meals and calm discussion. With Anita. With Rhea. It was a lot of pressure, being the dad, the husband, the son. The son his mother wouldn’t listen to. The San Remo apartment was a symbol of everything Stan Lowenstein had worked toward, and Anita was content to just let it go and he felt powerless to stop her. Failing his father.

  Stan, who always backed Anita unconditionally, would not have understood his problems with Rhea. Frankly, Nathan wasn’t sure he understood them himself. He was just so . . . pissed off all the time. And the anxiety was crushing. He often wondered how he’d gotten so old—so old, man—with the kids in their teens, and every day, each and every day, looking like it was going to be exactly like the day before. He’d always been a no-nonsense sort, just getting things done, and he had to admit he hadn’t thought too much about his decisions in general. Just followed along as though ticking off a checklist: college, career, marriage, kids, paying for college, looking after mother.

  And then, last New Year’s, the clock hit midnight and he stood on the stairs of his home in Atlanta, watching all the guests—the women who kept their figures, the ones who’d let themselves go, and the ones who’d been lumps to begin with, and the men with their potbellies and paunches and various stages of hair loss—kissing and hugging and wishing one another the best. This, he had wondered, is the best?

  Rhea accused him of growing distant, and she was right. He was pulling away but to where he couldn’t figure out. What he wanted was a time machine, another chance to try again. Would he pick Rhea once more? He very well might. She was attractive, but serious. Always so serious. Controlling each and every minute. The woman was married to her day planner more than she was to him. So then maybe he would do something different, too, if he had a new chance.

  Anita had listened, finally, after an hour on the phone with that Dakota character.

  “Maybe you’d have more time for me if I took up knitting,” he’d joked, but even he could hear that the words sounded mean and not at all funny. “Help me, help me, Mom,” he’d wanted to say. “Everything is broken and I don’t know what to do.”

  But instead, he gave her the facts that he’d moved out, the kids were fine, he and Rhea were considering a divorce and no, he wasn’t sure if anything could be repaired. You can’t fix when you don’t know what part is broke, he thought to himself now, crossing the street to sit in the park and mull over the building that had been his family’s home.

  Would his kids, he wondered, one day feel this way about the house in Atlanta? Maybe his own father had taken the train to Queens and looked over his past, too, had been the better man and come home to Anita and his boys and left them none the wiser. That image, too, left Nathan bitter. Even in his imagination, his father bested him.

  Catherine had ordered a selection of menu items from an Indian restaurant—chicken tikka masala, lamb vindaloo, an assortment of chutneys—and set the dining table nicely. But, at the last minute, Anita called and explained that she and Marty wouldn’t be coming for dinner after all. Something about Marty and Nathan not being able to be in the same room with each other.

  “What about Nathan?”

  “Oh, you’re very gracious to let him come over, dear,” said Anita. “I think he’s a bit mopey is all.”

  “I just ordered dinner for four people,” said Catherine aloud as she hung up the phone. She tried calling James and Dakota, but James was working late and Dakota was going to the movies with her pal Olivia. In the end, only Nathan showed up.

  “Thanks for having me over,” he said at the doorway, offering her a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine.

  “Hope you brought an appetite,” she said. “I got too much.”

  Typically, Catherine would have offered a before-dinner drink, but she was not in the mood for entertaining. It was one thing if Anita and Marty had joined them. But Nathan was new and she didn’t much want to ask insightful questions and get to know him. Be polite and seem curious. After all, he was just going to be in town for a week or two. And, it didn’t help matters that he’d caught her unprepared in the morning. She’d grown more annoyed throughout the day when she reflected on her morning’s interruptions.

  “This must be kinda annoying,” he said. “I get it. But I’d be an even bigger jerk if I just excused myself and left you with all this food. So let’s sit down, have a bite, and then I’ll eat and run and you can resume your life’s activities.”

  Catherine was relieved. “That’d be great, thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  “No worries,” said Nathan, once again putting his windbreaker on the sofa. “
It’ll be nice to have a meal on the old table.”

  “And I made sure to put down trivets,” said Catherine. “Have to keep the hot things off the table.”

  Nathan laughed. “You have me to thank for my mother’s obsession with that,” he said, ladling out a bit of curry onto some rice and taking a seat. “I was home alone one Saturday—I must have been about twelve—and I built a molten volcano on the table. And then I blew it up. There was clay and hot liquid everywhere, and my mother had to try three different guys before she found someone who would refinish it.”

  Catherine nibbled at a samosa.

  “After that, even if you were just doing homework, my mother would come by and say, ‘Use a coaster!’” said Nathan. “What about you? Any childhood mishaps?”

  “Oh, no,” said Catherine. “This is your trip down memory lane.”

  “No, really, tell me,” he said, looking at her intently.

  “Well, I stole my parents’ car when I was fifteen,” she said. “I wanted to go to a rock concert and they said no.”

  “So you’re a rule-breaker,” said Nathan.

  “I’m an independent thinker,” said Catherine. But she smiled, just a little. Nathan grinned back.

  By the time they were finished, Catherine had learned that Anita and Stan rarely fought, that Nathan had once tried to learn how to knit—he couldn’t get beyond tying a slipknot, he said—and that he was separated from his wife.

  “It’s just not working,” he said.

  “I understand,” said Catherine. “I packed it in after fifteen unpleasant years myself.”

  He showed her photos of his kids on his cell phone, told her he’d never have left New York if his soon-to-be ex-wife hadn’t pushed. Nathan remembered vividly the day the family had moved into the apartment.

  “The movers were carrying these heavy boxes and they kept saying, ‘Where to, ma’am?’ and my mother was just standing at the window right there, looking out onto the park, and crying, ‘This is our view, Stan, this is our view.’” He stopped talking for a moment, composing himself. “They’d earned it all, you see, all the money. My dad worked and my mom just did everything else. It was a big deal, the day we unpacked our stuff. I really felt a sense that we’d done it all together, the whole family. That we each had a role.”

  “You don’t want to see her let it go, do you?”

  “No,” said Nathan. “I came here to try and talk her out of it, or to maybe sell it to me and my brothers. But it’s complicated and we all have our own financial constraints and so on. I don’t believe in counting on an inheritance. That much I got from my dad.”

  “I hear he was a great man,” she said.

  “The best,” said Nathan, feeling the anxiety rise. “A real stand-up.”

  “And you look just like him,” said Catherine, to which Nathan only nodded and seemed to get a tad emotional.

  She had heard Anita complain about Nathan many times, and yet this man seemed to be much gentler than she would have expected. He was sweet, thought Catherine. Misunderstood, perhaps. And, more than anything, he seemed to need some time in the family home.

  Catherine insisted he let her call Anita to inform her that Nathan wanted to stay over in his old room.

  “It’s fine by me,” she told her friend. “I’m just going to move up to my house in Cold Spring tonight.”

  “Well, if you’re sure, dear,” said Anita over the phone. “It would be very kind of you. I think Nathan needs to just wrap his head around the idea of the wedding, and the sale of the apartment. Get a little closure, as they say.”

  So it was all settled. Catherine packed up a few things she wanted to take with her—the book she was reading, her cosmetics—and put it all in a weekender bag by the door.

  “I feel terrible that I’m kicking you out of your own home,” said Nathan. “Your home that’s our home, but still. You don’t have to do this.”

  “It’s okay,” said Catherine. “I’ll help you clean up from dinner and then I’ll go.”

  But after they finished cleaning up, they decided to make tea. And, really, it seemed so silly for her to head to the train at that hour.

  “We’re two adults,” said Catherine. “I’m sure we can manage to share the same space. I go to my bed and you go to yours.” But she purposely didn’t call Anita back to let her know, and she didn’t mention it the next day when the two of them went to meet Peri and discuss the idea of a wedding pocketbook, either.

  So, for a couple of days, Nathan became her clandestine roommate of sorts, doing whatever business he did during the day and meeting Anita for dinners. He packed up his luggage and brought it over but kept his hotel room. Anita, he said, wouldn’t understand if Catherine was there.

  And Catherine even went up to The Phoenix several days in a row, and made the choice to come back to the San Remo to sleep each evening. It was fun, she told herself, getting to know Nathan. Having company around. Like having an easygoing, platonic sleepover. He was hot, there was no question, and he clearly took good care of himself. But most of all, he was funny and sweet, telling her stories about his parents and himself. They ate ice cream sundaes on the sofa, watching television side by side, and stayed up late discussing their favorite movies.

  He told her about some of the pieces Anita had left behind when she moved. He even gave her a tour of his childhood bedroom.

  “What I really want to know,” he said, unscrewing the mirror from the back of the door, “is if she’s still here.”

  “Who?”

  “My dream girl,” said Nathan, turning the mirror around to reveal a very 1970s poster of Farrah Fawcett, all feathered hair and big teeth and large tits barely contained in a red bathing suit.

  Catherine got a kick out of that one. He was very interested in hearing about the store, enjoyed tasting wines with her, and expressed an interest in coming up with her one morning to see The Phoenix.

  “I’d love that,” she said, and they took the train together, chatting all the way.

  And every night they said their good nights and went their separate ways down the hall.

  Until that morning. Catherine was emptying the dishwasher—she rarely cooked and the top rack was filled entirely with coffee mugs—when Nathan strolled into the kitchen wearing gray jersey shorts and a T-shirt, a newspaper in hand. She had barely rolled out of bed and she was wearing a white tank top and a pair of red pajama bottoms that had fallen low on her waist.

  “Great day,” he said, coming up behind her and handing her a mug. As she turned and twisted to reach into the cupboard to her left, Nathan moved a little closer, so her back was almost pushed into his front. Catherine stood still; mere inches separated them. With his right hand, he picked up a cup from the top rack and stretched, over her right shoulder and across her front, placing the mug in the cupboard. It would have been much easier for him to put the cups away with his left hand, Catherine realized, in sort of a hazy way. Her skin tingled even though he wasn’t actually touching her. Instead, he was completely in her space, moving his well-muscled arm around her repeatedly, almost as though he were coming from behind to give her a hug. It felt special, being together in a kitchen, putting away the dishes. Intimate and real. This was not the type of day-to-day activity she shared with most men, and so it felt unique. And natural. Nathan smelled very good—citrusy and clean—and all she had to do was stand there, at the sink, as he continued to reach around with mugs and speak softly.

  “I slept well,” he told her, his voice quiet and soothing. “You?”

  “Um-hm,” said Catherine. She found herself wishing she’d been drinking more coffee so there would be an endless supply of mugs. She wanted to push back, just those few inches, and let her body rub against his.

  “No nightmares,” he whispered. “You?”

  Catherine shook her head. Nathan was at least half a foot taller than she was, and solid.

  “Oh, look,” he said. “We’re out of coffee cups.” He put his hands on the sink
, one on either side of Catherine’s body, and brought his mouth very, very close to her ear. “Can I help you with anything else?” he asked, and Catherine, almost involuntarily, tilted her head and arched her neck.

  “Okay,” whispered Nathan, as he began nuzzling her, then taking playful bites.

  Catherine gave in to the sensation to press back with her bottom, and Nathan responded by moving closer, pulling himself nearer to her so she was caught between the edge of the sink and his body. She couldn’t even turn around but she felt safe. Protected. Excited as Nathan began kissing the lobe of her ear and then, still holding on to the sink with his left hand, used his right to reach up and turn her head just slightly, so that he could kiss her full on the lips. Deeply. Still with his right hand he applied a small amount of pressure, so that Catherine was falling into him, back against his body, no longer steady on her feet. She opened her mouth again, ready for more, and he obliged, his hand on her cheek, her neck, her tank top, and then, suddenly, he was reaching inside her shirt and stroking her stomach, touching her breast.

  She opened her mouth wider, teasing him with her tongue, as his left hand let go of the sink and came to her waist, slowly began to move down the length of her body and into the waistband of her pajamas.

  “Oh,” moaned Catherine. This is what happiness would be like, she imagined. Doing domestic chores and making love in between. She brought her arms up behind her, around Nathan’s neck, so she could kiss him again. Just as her body began to protest the awkwardness of her position, she swiveled around to face Nathan without breaking the kiss. In an instant, he had lifted her onto the edge of the sink and held her there, his hands tight around her bottom, as he sucked on her lips with increasing force.

  “Let’s,” he said, leaning her over to her right so he could tilt her body and begin tugging off her pajama bottoms.